MySpace isn't going away. People like the unrestricted freedom the MySpace has, unlike most of the other social networking sites that preceeded it. If anyone is in free fall, it's got to be dating sites like Match.com et al, who offer most of the same features of MySpace but make you pay. There is no longer any reason to pay for Match.com, except for ignorance of the free sites that are available.
That being said, I feel like MySpace has become the KMart of the internet, and by that I mean the quality of people it's attracting from the over-30 crowd.
I agree with the article that there is room for other social networking sites to succeed, they just have to find their niche. Facebook looks very promising, but very few people from my age group have found it. It doesn't matter how great a site is if nobody uses it. Facebook has definitely got their work cut out for them in getting the word out.
Yes, implementing multitasking correctly was an important step forward (anyone remember using Switcher on their Fat Mac?); also interface played a role. With System 7, Apple opened up the Apple Menu so that the user could customize it with any program, not just desk accessories, so there was no point any longer in writing an application as a DA that could only be launched if it was loaded into the system at boot time.
And to the other posters, DA's were always, ever intended to be mini apps, just like Widgets. If you look at this screenshot of the upcoming Gadgets in Windows Vista, you'll see that five of the eleven Gadgets first made their appearance as DA's in the Mac OS (Calendar, Clock, Puzzle, Notepad, Scapbook).
You do realize that Konfabulator (which started out on the Mac OS) was nothing more than a return to Apple's Desktop Accessories, which premiered in Mac System 1.0, but Apple started to drift away from with the introduction of System 7? By Mac OS 9, DA's were pretty much dead, and with the introduction of OS X, gone altogether. Konfabulator may have had a lot of influence on the way Apple implemented Widgets, but technically Apple is only returning to a concept that they pioneered in 1984.
A smart investor can even make money on a flame-out. Just look at the SCO situation; I don't know if this is the case now, but for years it was difficult to find available stock because everyone was shorting it, just waiting for the inevitable crash.
The "Greater Fool" theory of investing is at work here. If Steorn doesn't have what they claim to have, then the current investors are simply looking for a "greater fool" to take the company off of their hands, who may in turn be looking to do the same thing. At some point, the hype dies and it all collapses, but right now the company has some momentum.
Journal entry on the front page?
on
Dvorak Rants on CSS
·
· Score: -1, Troll
Well, Mr. Tin-Foil Hat, sure there's a lot of multi-national corporations in the world. That, in itself, is not a terrible thing.
For example, there's a Volvo plant not far from where I live. Bear in mind, it was built before Ford bought out Volvo. Essentially, a Swedish company made a huge investment in a South Carolina community; they built a factory, they hired thousands of local workers, and they've pumped many millions into the economy. Granted, a good chunk of the profits were going back to Sweden, but a larger share of the revenues stayed here. And of course, any US citizen was free to buy stock in Volvo (which, I think the stock options for the workers was pretty good, IIRC), so the net profits made their way back here, too.
Except that all economic exchange is balanced! What do you think those countries are going to do with the American dollars they get from gambling?
Probably convert them into their local currency, I would imagine. But as inflation hits the US at home, it's buying less overseas; the value of the dollar is dropping outside of the US. So when the dollar is exchanged for 1 Euro one day and.5 Euros the next, then economic value is being destroyed.
And as I explained elsewhere, the economic value created in other countries by our trade deficit results in that money being spent in their country rather than ours.
Plus, keep in mind that there are a lot of dollars being exchanged outside of the US, such as in reserve currency systems set up by other governments. When dollars are spent at home, federal and local governments generally get their cut of the transaction, one way or another. When US dollars are exchanged overseas, the US government receives nothing.
which means they are going to use those dollars to purchase American goods and services, or trade those dollars to others who want to purchase American goods and services.
The point you're missing is that, somewhere in the transaction, value is destroyed. The value of a dollar is not a constant.
In the short run, yes, consumers will benefit from lower prices. In the long run, dollars are being sucked out of the US economy into overseas countries, where those companies are spending the money on their local economy; hiring labor, building factories, and what-not. That money does not come back to us.
As more money is pulled out of the US economy, it becomes a supply and demand issue; as the supply of money in the US drops, demand for it increases and the value of the dollar goes up, inflating prices nationally. Imported goods are still cheaper, so American businesses cannot compete and they shut down. Skilled but unemployed workers start competing for low wage positions.
Free trade is a wonderful idea, as long as it's balanced. If there's at least as much money flowing into the country as there is flowing out, then no problem.
Free trade which lines the pockets of an American corporation is OK. Free trade which cannot line the pockets of an American corporation and goes to other nations is not OK.
I know you meant that as a slam, but I absolutely agree with that statement. As an American, I am very concerned about trade deficits. Sure, it strengthens the economies of other nations, but it does so at the expense of the American economy.
It's not a double standard at all, it's just seeking a balanced economic exchange.
and lost sales due to online piracy is higher, so it probably balances out, anyway.
I don't care for D&D myself, but within five minutes of me reading this headline to a cow-orker, he found them on a bittorrent tracking site and was downloading them.
Even though you posted as AC, I'll respond anyway...
Dude, did you even read the article? One explanation for global warming is that there is a direct correlation between the temperature of the earth's surface and variations in solar activity. Makes sense, doesn't it?
Gee, if the Sun goes through cycles of heating up and cooling down, don't you think that that is a reasonable, NATURAL explanation for global warming?
Al Gore says that zero disagreed that global warming was happening. Well, gee, just compare temperatures over the past two decades to see an upward trend, that's a no-brainer.
Zero disagreed with the conclusion that global warming was man-made. That's extremely murky to me. How many countless factors out there are having an impact on global temperatures? Are we saying that global warming is 100%, exclusively, the cause of man? I would find it very difficult to believe that 932 randomly selected samples came to that conclusion. But, of course, the question wasn't phrased in that way. So technically, if a scientist said that.000001 was man-made, then that's an affirmative answer to the question, "Is global warming man-made?"
This is why so many polls on political issues are bogus, because the questions are often phrased in such a way as to generate a certain majority response.
Think of it... all of the Google Spreadsheet files are stored on THEIR servers. When you open up your files, just like with GMail, the content will be searched for keywords and relevant AdWords will be displayed on the page. It's not that way now, but it's coming.
And who is to say that Google won't index those files to create a marketing profile of you?
The more of your data Google owns, the more sophisticated their profile of you becomes.
There's no evidence that Apple, today, is worried about the Mac being perceived as a toy.
Back in 1984, yes, Steve Jobs was worried about his revolutionary graphical-based system being perceived as a toy, and was famously anti-games at the time (Jobs, himself, does not play computer games). You had to file an application with Apple in order to purchase the Mac software development tools, and include a description of the application(s) you were going to write; and if you said that you were planning to write a game, your application simply did not get approved.
Fast forward about two decades, and you see that Apple and Jobs have no such biases anymore. I remember when Jobs called out John Carmack to demo Quake III at a Macworld keynote, and games have been featured prominently on Apple's website from time to time. Apple has even kept the graphics cards in their systems fairly current over the last seven or eight years.
The problem is not Apple; the problem is that, in the realm of games development, Apple is completely at the mercy of third-party developers to write games for the Mac. And given that the Mac only has around 4% marketshare (give or take), 99.999% of all games get written for Windows first, and very, very few are ported over. Mac-first and Mac-only games are almost non-existent. That's the reality of the marketplace, so it doesn't really make sense for Apple to throw a ton of money at game development when NOBODY buys a Mac to plays games.
I'm absolutely positive that Apple would LOVE to be known as a serious gaming company. Gamers spend BIG BUCKS on their hardware. Maybe now that Apple is selling x86 boxes you'll start to see more emphasis from Apple on gaming hardware, for those gamers that want to dual-boot, but it will never be a primary market for them unless Apple dumps OS X altogether (which ain't happenin).
Slashdot Mirror
MySpace isn't going away. People like the unrestricted freedom the MySpace has, unlike most of the other social networking sites that preceeded it. If anyone is in free fall, it's got to be dating sites like Match.com et al, who offer most of the same features of MySpace but make you pay. There is no longer any reason to pay for Match.com, except for ignorance of the free sites that are available.
That being said, I feel like MySpace has become the KMart of the internet, and by that I mean the quality of people it's attracting from the over-30 crowd.
I agree with the article that there is room for other social networking sites to succeed, they just have to find their niche. Facebook looks very promising, but very few people from my age group have found it. It doesn't matter how great a site is if nobody uses it. Facebook has definitely got their work cut out for them in getting the word out.
Slashdot was late to the game. It's already been posted to Drudge and to the front page of Digg.
that Slashdot is just a wee bit liberal.
Every major news organization has asked YouTube why the video got flagged as inappropriate. YouTube has not given a reason.
If the answer was as simple as the user community flagging the video, why don't they just say that?
Does it have any fricken sharks in it?
Yes, implementing multitasking correctly was an important step forward (anyone remember using Switcher on their Fat Mac?); also interface played a role. With System 7, Apple opened up the Apple Menu so that the user could customize it with any program, not just desk accessories, so there was no point any longer in writing an application as a DA that could only be launched if it was loaded into the system at boot time.
And to the other posters, DA's were always, ever intended to be mini apps, just like Widgets. If you look at this screenshot of the upcoming Gadgets in Windows Vista, you'll see that five of the eleven Gadgets first made their appearance as DA's in the Mac OS (Calendar, Clock, Puzzle, Notepad, Scapbook).
You do realize that Konfabulator (which started out on the Mac OS) was nothing more than a return to Apple's Desktop Accessories, which premiered in Mac System 1.0, but Apple started to drift away from with the introduction of System 7? By Mac OS 9, DA's were pretty much dead, and with the introduction of OS X, gone altogether. Konfabulator may have had a lot of influence on the way Apple implemented Widgets, but technically Apple is only returning to a concept that they pioneered in 1984.
When I was a kid, we learned how to program in assembly. And we did it by manually punching holes in punchcards.
Kids today, they got it too easy...
Great joke, kid, that was one in a million!
America's Funniest Home Videos, hosted by America's stupidest comedian... :-P
A smart investor can even make money on a flame-out. Just look at the SCO situation; I don't know if this is the case now, but for years it was difficult to find available stock because everyone was shorting it, just waiting for the inevitable crash.
The "Greater Fool" theory of investing is at work here. If Steorn doesn't have what they claim to have, then the current investors are simply looking for a "greater fool" to take the company off of their hands, who may in turn be looking to do the same thing. At some point, the hype dies and it all collapses, but right now the company has some momentum.
Is that new? Never noticed that before.
Oh, and was that article supposed to be "funny"?
Because it wasn't.
No digg.
Well, Mr. Tin-Foil Hat, sure there's a lot of multi-national corporations in the world. That, in itself, is not a terrible thing.
For example, there's a Volvo plant not far from where I live. Bear in mind, it was built before Ford bought out Volvo. Essentially, a Swedish company made a huge investment in a South Carolina community; they built a factory, they hired thousands of local workers, and they've pumped many millions into the economy. Granted, a good chunk of the profits were going back to Sweden, but a larger share of the revenues stayed here. And of course, any US citizen was free to buy stock in Volvo (which, I think the stock options for the workers was pretty good, IIRC), so the net profits made their way back here, too.
Except that all economic exchange is balanced! What do you think those countries are going to do with the American dollars they get from gambling?
.5 Euros the next, then economic value is being destroyed.
Probably convert them into their local currency, I would imagine. But as inflation hits the US at home, it's buying less overseas; the value of the dollar is dropping outside of the US. So when the dollar is exchanged for 1 Euro one day and
And as I explained elsewhere, the economic value created in other countries by our trade deficit results in that money being spent in their country rather than ours.
Plus, keep in mind that there are a lot of dollars being exchanged outside of the US, such as in reserve currency systems set up by other governments. When dollars are spent at home, federal and local governments generally get their cut of the transaction, one way or another. When US dollars are exchanged overseas, the US government receives nothing.
which means they are going to use those dollars to purchase American goods and services, or trade those dollars to others who want to purchase American goods and services.
The point you're missing is that, somewhere in the transaction, value is destroyed. The value of a dollar is not a constant.
In the short run, yes, consumers will benefit from lower prices. In the long run, dollars are being sucked out of the US economy into overseas countries, where those companies are spending the money on their local economy; hiring labor, building factories, and what-not. That money does not come back to us.
As more money is pulled out of the US economy, it becomes a supply and demand issue; as the supply of money in the US drops, demand for it increases and the value of the dollar goes up, inflating prices nationally. Imported goods are still cheaper, so American businesses cannot compete and they shut down. Skilled but unemployed workers start competing for low wage positions.
Free trade is a wonderful idea, as long as it's balanced. If there's at least as much money flowing into the country as there is flowing out, then no problem.
Free trade which lines the pockets of an American corporation is OK. Free trade which cannot line the pockets of an American corporation and goes to other nations is not OK.
I know you meant that as a slam, but I absolutely agree with that statement. As an American, I am very concerned about trade deficits. Sure, it strengthens the economies of other nations, but it does so at the expense of the American economy.
It's not a double standard at all, it's just seeking a balanced economic exchange.
Basically, you had to buy some 3.5" floppies and then trim .25" off of one edge with the scissors before they would fit in the vending machine.
The official QBert game online:
http://games.yahoo.com/games/downloads/qb.html
and lost sales due to online piracy is higher, so it probably balances out, anyway.
I don't care for D&D myself, but within five minutes of me reading this headline to a cow-orker, he found them on a bittorrent tracking site and was downloading them.
a chamois cloth for wiping greasy fingerprints off the screen every two minutes.
Even though you posted as AC, I'll respond anyway...
Dude, did you even read the article? One explanation for global warming is that there is a direct correlation between the temperature of the earth's surface and variations in solar activity. Makes sense, doesn't it?
Gee, if the Sun goes through cycles of heating up and cooling down, don't you think that that is a reasonable, NATURAL explanation for global warming?
Al Gore says that zero disagreed that global warming was happening. Well, gee, just compare temperatures over the past two decades to see an upward trend, that's a no-brainer.
.000001 was man-made, then that's an affirmative answer to the question, "Is global warming man-made?"
Zero disagreed with the conclusion that global warming was man-made. That's extremely murky to me. How many countless factors out there are having an impact on global temperatures? Are we saying that global warming is 100%, exclusively, the cause of man? I would find it very difficult to believe that 932 randomly selected samples came to that conclusion. But, of course, the question wasn't phrased in that way. So technically, if a scientist said that
This is why so many polls on political issues are bogus, because the questions are often phrased in such a way as to generate a certain majority response.
Think of it... all of the Google Spreadsheet files are stored on THEIR servers. When you open up your files, just like with GMail, the content will be searched for keywords and relevant AdWords will be displayed on the page. It's not that way now, but it's coming.
And who is to say that Google won't index those files to create a marketing profile of you?
The more of your data Google owns, the more sophisticated their profile of you becomes.
You're absolutely right about that.
There's no evidence that Apple, today, is worried about the Mac being perceived as a toy.
Back in 1984, yes, Steve Jobs was worried about his revolutionary graphical-based system being perceived as a toy, and was famously anti-games at the time (Jobs, himself, does not play computer games). You had to file an application with Apple in order to purchase the Mac software development tools, and include a description of the application(s) you were going to write; and if you said that you were planning to write a game, your application simply did not get approved.
Fast forward about two decades, and you see that Apple and Jobs have no such biases anymore. I remember when Jobs called out John Carmack to demo Quake III at a Macworld keynote, and games have been featured prominently on Apple's website from time to time. Apple has even kept the graphics cards in their systems fairly current over the last seven or eight years.
The problem is not Apple; the problem is that, in the realm of games development, Apple is completely at the mercy of third-party developers to write games for the Mac. And given that the Mac only has around 4% marketshare (give or take), 99.999% of all games get written for Windows first, and very, very few are ported over. Mac-first and Mac-only games are almost non-existent. That's the reality of the marketplace, so it doesn't really make sense for Apple to throw a ton of money at game development when NOBODY buys a Mac to plays games.
I'm absolutely positive that Apple would LOVE to be known as a serious gaming company. Gamers spend BIG BUCKS on their hardware. Maybe now that Apple is selling x86 boxes you'll start to see more emphasis from Apple on gaming hardware, for those gamers that want to dual-boot, but it will never be a primary market for them unless Apple dumps OS X altogether (which ain't happenin).
My goodness, Grandma, what a fat pipe you've got!